'Singing, I am alive'

Sunday

Feb 13, 2011 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - In Hoi Ping, in Guangdong province in southern China, Xin Cai Tau grew up singing Cantonese folk songs - tunes that were still in her head decades later when she mentioned to volunteer Teresa Chen that she once loved to sing.

Jennifer Torres

STOCKTON - In Hoi Ping, in Guangdong province in southern China, Xin Cai Tau grew up singing Cantonese folk songs - tunes that were still in her head decades later when she mentioned to volunteer Teresa Chen that she once loved to sing.

Tau, 79, is one of the dozens of people who come every day to the Jene Wah center, a few blocks south of the Crosstown Freeway. It provides recreation, classes and meals to Chinese seniors.

"I'd love to hear all those traditional Chinese folk tunes," Tau said to Chen, who has long been active in the local Chinese community.

Soon after, Chen agreed to organize a choir at Jene Wah, and for two years now, the seniors who participate - there are about 15 of them - have been meeting once a week to rehearse songs that connect them to their homeland and to learn new music that reflects their lives here.

About half of the choir members are older than 80.

Last week at Jene Wah - as employees cleared lunch dishes and visitors played cards and mah-jongg - the senior choir sang two songs in honor of the recent lunar new year, smiling as they looked up from their music folders.

"Encore," Chen said when they were finished. "Now in English."

The choir members flipped through their folders and sang "You and Me," the theme song of the 2008 Olympic Games, held in Beijing: "Come together. Put your hand in mine. You and me, from one world, we are family."

Before starting the choir, Chen said, she traveled to Hong Kong for music lessons.

She studied Chinese instruments and sang Chinese arias.

When she returned, she asked the seniors in her choir what they wanted to sing.

"These people are ambitious," she said. "They want to sing opera."

Instead, they started a bit smaller, with folk songs and traditional music. Then, Chen said, they wanted to learn songs their grandchildren and great-grandchildren would understand. She taught them Christmas carols.

"It's very important for old people to stay happy," Tau said. "Singing, I am alive and in high spirits."

Phelma Yim is 91.

"I grew up in San Francisco Chinatown," she said. "That music was kind of in me somehow."

When she was in her early 20s, she joined a Chinese music club.

"During wartime, when groups would get together, we would sing and entertain," Yim said. "I usually sang Chinese music, folk songs or Chinese opera."

She joined the Jene Wah choir, she said, because she still enjoys the music.